*Millirad is the unit of physical radiation exposure, as indicated by this definition, whereas millirem includes a correction for biological effectiveness. For X-rays, beta rays, and gamma rays, 1 millirad is equal to 1 millirem, but for alpha particles, 1 ruillirad is equal to 20 millirems.

1. P Nulty, “Get Ready for Power Brownouts,”

Fortune,

June 5, 1989.

2. U.S. Council for Energy Awareness, “USCEA 1988 International Reactor Survey” (1989).

45 (1985). This paper concludes that 6% of all deaths in the United States are due to air pollution. However, in private conversations with the authors, they now consider 2-5% to be a better estimate. If the U.S. population were in age equilibrium, there would be about 3 million deaths per year, which means that 60,000-150,000 deaths per year would be from air pollution. For simplicity we take a single intermediate value, 100,000.

3. National Council on Radiation Protection and Measurements (NCRP), “Natural Background Radiation in the United States,” NCRP Report No. 45 (1975).

4. “Report of the President’s Commission on The Accident at Three Mile Island,” Washington, D.C. (1979); “Three Mile Island, A Report to the Commissioners and to the Public,” Nuclear Regulatory Commission Special Inquiry Group; Ad Hoc Interagency Dose Assessment Group, “Population Dose and Health Impact of the Accident at the Three Mile Island Nuclear Station,” Nuclear Regulatory Commission Document NUREG-0558 (1979). Early assessment gave an average dose of 1.7 mrem, but later revisions reduced this to 1.2 mrem.

5. James Hardin (Kentucky Department of Human Resources), private communication. He was in charge of environmental monitoring in the area.

15. U.S. National Council on Radiation Protection and Measurements (NCRP), “Evaluation of Occupational and Environmental Exposures to Radon and Radon Daughters in the United States,” NCRP Report No. 78 (1984).

16. International Commission on Radiological Protection (ICRP),

Risk from Indoor Exposure of Radon Daughters,

ICRP Publication No. 50 (Pergamon Press, Oxford, 1987).

17. National Academy of Sciences Committee on Biological Effects of Ionizing Radiation (BEIR), “The Effects on Populations of Exposure to Low Levels of Ionizing

19. U.S. National Council on Radiation Protection and Measurements (NCRP), “Influence of Dose and Its Distribution in Time on Dose-Response Relationships for Low LET Radiation,” NCRP Report No. 64 (1980).

20. R. Garrison, U.S. Department of Energy, private communication, on transport accidents. Estimates for others from various sources of information.

Recovery at Three Mile Island,” Senate Committee on Environment and Public Works, Serial No. 96-14 (July 1980); “Investigation of the March 28, 1979 Three Mile Island Accident,” U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission Document NUREG-0600 (August 1979); Three Mile Island: The Most Studied Nuclear Accident in History,” Report to the Congress by the Comptroller-General, U.S. General Accounting Office Report EMD-80-109 (September 9, 1980).

17. “Severe Accident Risks: An Assessment for Five U.S. Nuclear Power Plants,” U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission Doc. NUREG-1150 (1989).

18. W. R. Butler, C. G. Tinkler, and L. S. Rubinstein, “Regulatory Perspective on Hydrogen Control for LWR Plants, “Workshop on Impact of Hydrogen on Water Reactor Safety, Albuquerque, New Mexico (January 1981); W. R. Butler and C. G. Tinkler, “Regulatory Perspective on Hydrogen Control for Degraded Core Accidents,” Second International Workshop on the Impact of Hydrogen on Water Reactor Safety, Albuquerque, New Mexico (1982).

3. Reference 1 gives the risk from sulfur dioxide (S02) as 3.5 x 10-5/year for 1 microgram SO, per meter3 of air. An average person inhales 7,000 meters3 of air per year, so this corresponds to inhaling 7,000 micrograms, or 0.007g, of SO2. The deaths per gram of SO, are then (3.5 x 10-5/0.007 =) 0.005. An average coal-burning plant produces 3 x 1Osg of SO, per day; this could then cause (3 x 109 x 0.005 =) 1.5 million deaths if it were all inhaled by people.

4. See Figure 1 (Chapter 11), which gives the effects from eating all the waste produced in one year. This number must be divided by the number of days per year to obtain the effects from one day.

5. B. L. Cohen, “Ocean Dumping of Radioactive Waste,”

Nuclear Technology, 47,

163 (1980). Some of the numbers quoted in that paper have been changed due to later data, but these are incorporated into the results quoted here.

This is a review article which gives references to the original papers.

3. Code of Federal Regulations, Title 10, Part 50. Appendix 1; U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission, Regulatory Guides 1.109-1.113(1976). These specify expenditure of $1,000/man-rem. Dividing this by the risk given in Chapter 5, 260 x l0-6 per man-rem, gives $4 million per cancer death averted.

4. United Nations Scientific Committee on Effects of Atomic Radiation, “Sources, Effects, and Risks of Ionizing Radiation,” United Nations, New York (1988).

5. Code of Federal Regulations, Title 10, Part 61.

6. U.S. Energy Research and Development Administration (ERDA), “Alternatives for Long Term Management of Defense High-Level Radioactive Waste,” Document ERDA-77-42/1 (1977).

16. International Atomic Energy Agency Information Circular, “Report on a Radiological Accident in the Southern Urals on 29 September 1957,” INFCIRC/368 (28 July 1989).

CHAPTER 13

1. E R. Best and M. J. Driscoll,

Transactions of the American Nuclear Society, 34,

380 (1980).

2. B. L. Cohen, Breeder Reactors-A Renewable Energy Source,

American Journal of Physics, 51,

75 (1983).

3. R. Avery and H. A. Bethe, “Breeder Reactors: The Next Generation,” in

Nuclear Power: Both Sides,

M. Kaku and J. Trainer (eds.) (Norton, New York, 1982).

4. T. G. Ayers et al.,

LMFBR Program Review, U.S. Energy Research and Development Administration (1978); Report of the Task Forces to the LMFBR Review Steering Committee, Energy Research and Development Administration (April 6, 1977).